$35 Qi Charging System for Galaxy Note 3

RAVPower ® Wireless Charging Receiver Wireless 

Charger Charging Receiver For Samsung Galaxy 

Note III 3, Qi Standard Wireless Charging Receiver

Read a really cool short article on Anandtech about the state of wireless charging technology, and remembered a person showing me this setup in the back of his Note 3. I hopped on Amazon and ordered the receiver and charging station for about $35. Have a look at the system... I put some hyperlinks in this article for you reading pleasure should you wish to think more about it! 

All the images used in this post can be found at this Amazon Link http://goo.gl/xfKT3c 

The Gold Pins Transfer the Power to the Phone

The receiver pins align with the ones under the back cover of the phone

RAVPower ® Wireless Charging Receiver 

Wireless Charger Charging Receiver 

For Samsung Galaxy Note III 3 

Qi Standard Wireless Charging Receiver

This is the charger system, a 5vdc 1.5a USB brick, USB cable, and the Qi charger itself. This thing takes power from the grid through power adapter and usb cable, turns it into a inductive resonating field, and the receiver part converts that field into 600ma of charging inside the phone, which it passes through the gold pins into the phone, and then phones power control mosfet directs and controls the charging of the large modular user replaceable lithium ion battery of the Galaxy Note 3 in this case :)

I am curious to see how all of this actually works, and more specifically if it will work with my current UAG case installed, the literature warns that a case thicker than 5mm on the back will interfere with the charging, I suspect it will work fine ^^

Qi 

It means natural energy in Chinese, but is a set of standards of wireless power charging of portable electronics. Developed by the WPC wireless power consortium in 2008, first gen system were 5w and latest gen systems are 10w.

Qi uses electromagnetic induction to transfer power between a transmitter coil and a receiver coil. The oscillating magnetic field from the transmitted induces an alternating current in the receiver coil, where the resulting current is rectified from AC to DC and then sent to the phone to power the battery charging.

Port Death Avoidance ^^

One of the coolest things that wireless charging enables is fewer cycles on those little micro-usb ports that are so easy to break. Since you have to charge your smartphone often to make good use of it, the little charging ports get a lot of cycles, hundreds, and they are easy to bend and break. Wireless charging solutions enable you to preserve your port, making your phone last longer. I am very excited by the idea of this! I first saw induction charging back in 1999 with my sonicare toothbrush. It used a wire loop coil base and a receiver inside the hermetically sealed sonic welded case base of the brush system. To charge the toothbrush, you simply put it in its dock, and the waterproof setup leave no contacts to short out or corrode, the inductive charging transfers the power :) To this day Meg and I still have and occasionally use one of these harmonic tooth brushes.

Micro-USB is the most fragile connector that Android Phones almost all share, and people break these things all the time by inserting the cable while there is tension on the cable. The tiny female micro-usb header on the board of the phone is easily bent by this kind of pressure, and similarly the male micro-usb plug can be easily mechanically distorted. It is a small thin and fragile connection type that was championed because it would enable thin form factors in future devices, but no thought appears to have been given to the strength or durability or complete lack there of to this standard.

Prior to micro-usb each phone had a custom made barrel plug adapter or some other electrical connector that was unique. Each time you upgraded your phone, you had to get a new adapter, and this created a lot of electronic waste. You can learn more about the history of this at the following link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply 

The port on the Galaxy Note 3 is even more unusual. While it can accept a standard android charging plug, it was designed to use the OEM charging brick and cable which has a special USB3 level wider connection called Micro-USB-B

900mah with USB3.0 speeds, Micro-USB-B of the Note 3

Micro-USB-B is a rare connector that only one other device in our home uses, the backup drive for Meg's desktop uses this same connection. It is unfortunately doomed to obscurity because of a new standard USB connector called Type-C that is like Apple's lighting connector, namely symmetrical about its rotation, so you can plug-it in either way.

Micro-USB Type C 

Update May 2nd 2015

It arrived after leaving South Carolina, USPS delivered it while I was gone yesterday. Picked it up fro the office this morning and promptly set it up to test it. It works :) It does warm up the phone, heating the battery, the base station and anything making contact with it. I charged from 60 to 72 % in about 20 minutes, meaning its not super fast like the OEM plug charger, but it charges fast enough.

When you place the phone onto the charger when the phone is off, this cool graphic comes up showing the charging process. I will post a picture of this soon. To demo the system I used a little bit of scotch tape, the clear office type, to hold  the receiver in position. I tested it first with my AUG case off, and then tested it with the case on. It works :) It seems the inductive transfer can travel effectively though a few mm of case materials that are non metallic.

After testing, I installed the system out of the way, so that its easy for me to just set the phone on it for charging. Previously, I charged my phone with all of my other electronics, on the floor near my computer, but this required packing up the cables when done, something that uses up time. Lots of unplugging and plugging. This one wireless charging system on my phone, my MVP of portable electronics, makes life easier in a very real and notable way.

It Works :) Wooo Hooo : The GN3 and Qi Charging System